


Blackhawks Down (Shorthanded)

by YeahScience



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Chicago Blackhawks, Crack, Desert Island, Dramedy, Emergency - Freeform, Plane Crash, Survival, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YeahScience/pseuds/YeahScience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Blackhawks are flying to a game in Buffalo. The weather there is ridiculous though, and some of the team opt for taking the long way via the team bus. A few brave the storm, deciding to fly anyway. </p><p>They made the wrong choice. The plane crashes and the Hawks are stranded on a desert island. </p><p>Will they survive? Will they be found? WILL THEY BEAT THE SABRES?! (Let’s be honest; they will. ;) )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Major character deaths. Language. Innuendo. 
> 
> I wrote several different versions of this one: some dramas, some comedies. Both had their merits and downfalls. This final version here is intended to be a dramedy (drama+comedy), so if something seems darkly humorous, it is intentional. I give you permission to laugh. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The guys were sitting around in a private waiting room at O’Hare, waiting for their plane. And God damn, they were bored. Teuvo, Panarin, and Shaw had even started a game of Ninja in an attempt to stave off the boredom. Kane was drinking a beer at the bar with Jonny, and Corey Crawford was curled up in an armchair and snoring like a chainsaw. He had played all 6 periods of a 3OT game and could not possibly stay awake another moment. Hjalmarsson was trying to watch Netflix on his iPad, but still heard Corey through his noise-canceling headphones. 

Q walked in, and all the Hawks’ heads snapped up in an anxious hopefulness. Seabrook punched Corey on his shoulder, and he awoke with a grunt. Hjammer lifted one of his headphones to listen to the announcement. All of their hopes were soon dashed when the coach shook his head sharply. The sleep-deprived netminder began to blubber and tear up in fatigued exasperation. 

“Boys,” Coach addressed them with his booming voice. “Obviously, that’s the bad news. But I got some good news.” Eyes perked up. “There’s an overnight bus that’ll drive through the night to get us to Buffalo. I mean, it’ll be a long ride-”

“A longer ride than sex with Jonny?” Kaner catcalled drunkenly, to a few giggles from around the team and a sharp look from Q. 

“Whatever,” he huffed. “Our official team plane is grounded: won’t take off ‘cuz of the shitty weather in Buffalo. There is an independent charter who is willing to risk it. It’s a little regional jet and everything, but it's obviously a lot faster than taking the bus. I recommend that you all take the bus-”

“FUCK THAT!” Shawzy screamed. “I am taking that plane, bitches!” Kane and Corey applauded. 

Lo and behold, the voice of reason made himself heard. “Come on, guys,” Jonny rationalized. “Are you seriously gonna fly in this weather? It’s wetter than a fangirl out there. Heh heh.” Yeah, Jonny was a little buzzed and tired as well.

Q was growing frustrated. “Alright, alright. Now let’s vote. Who wants to take the bus?” He whispered to himself, counting the hands raised up in the air. “So that’s Toews, Keith, Darling, Teravainen, Anisimov, TVR, Kruger, Desjardins, Ladd, and our reserves.”

“So that leaves the following dumbasses taking the plane: Hossa, Shaw, Crawford, Panarin, Seabrook, Rozsival, Hjalmarsson, and Kane. 

“So yeah. Bus: good. Plane: dumbasses. Alright, let’s go.” Half the team leapt up with excitement, and the other half slid out of their chairs, groggy and dripping with fatigue. Regardless, everyone was relentlessly eager to get out of that room and finally get on the road. They could always sleep on the bus. Or plane. 

The tearful goodbye that separated the team took place right in front of the walkway to the plane. The eight risk takers peeled away from the group and everybody else gruffly mumbled that they’d see them in Buffalo. As he was leading the group towards the airport shuttle station, Jonny felt some strange sentiment seize his muscles. Something told him to turn back and look at the team walking down the jetbridge. When he did, it looked like a massive yawning throat swallowing his teammates one by one. Kane was the last in line, and the shade of the dark hallway gradually blended him in with the flat blackness of his surroundings. Jonny gulped and tried to shake this unsettling and entirely irrational fear. 

~*~

The plane was small, but not cramped. There were four seats in a row, separated down the middle by a narrow aisle. As the Blackhawks filtered in and took their seats, a man’s voice reassured them over the airplane loudspeaker. 

“Hello, Blackhawks!” Everyone could tell that he must’ve been beaming in his cockpit, blessed that the Blackhawks had graced the cabin of his plane. “My name is Andy, and thanks for letting me fly you to Buffalo! Now, the weather is a little sketchy over there, but I’m plotting a course that should keep us out of the roughest patches. After all, you guys get beat up enough on the ice!” The metallic hum of the engines was the only applause the pilot got. He cleared his throat. 

“Anyway, with the rerouting, we should be in Buffalo in about 2 hours. You’ll have plenty of time to rest up before your big game!” A ding. “But I wanna get going as quickly as possible, so I’ve turned on the fasten-seatbelt sign and we’ll be taxiing momentarily. Flight attendants, prepare for crosscheck.”

Shaw watched the flight attendants intently as they obediently followed instructions (and cast several eyebrow-raised sideways glances at the weary players). Many were returned. Marian was too busy with his nose buried in a book and Crow was all the way in the back of the plane, his legs stretched out across the aisle. 

Over the speaker, a woman’s voice began to methodically recite completely arbitrary emergency instructions. Another stood at the front of the cabin, pantomiming. There was an unmistakeable eye contact made between her and Kane when she demonstrated how to manually inflate the safety vest. Seabrook rolled his eyes. 

The plane lurched backwards and began to crawl into its turn. The group shared a collective thought: hell freakin’ yeah. They were tired, bored, cranky, and wanted nothing than a quiet flight accompanied by a nice nap. They’d wake up in Buffalo, catch a shuttle to their hotel, and fall back asleep. Q would probably let them skip the optional morning practice. They hoped, at least.

By the time the plane reached the runway, the wind had risen to a veritable howl outside. The fuselage was buffeted by the steady gust, and cabin seemed to tilt dangerously over to one side. Artemi wrang his hands nervously in his lap. Nobody else seemed to care, though; they just wanted to get their asses in the air. 

"Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff."

Suddenly, the small turbines under the wings began to growl, then scream as the plane shot down the runway. The force pinned all the Hawks against their seats. After a few tense seconds, the fuselage rocked and the Hawks were airborne. Shaw clapped excitedly. 

They would land in an hour and 45 minutes. They just wouldn’t know where.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plane crashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I uploaded this on mobile, so there might be strange autocorrect/HTML errors. I'll fix them when I get home.

Corey woke with a start; the plane had lurched dangerously and jostled him around in his seat. Fully thrown from his slumber and hopeless to find it again, he decided to stay awake and survey his teammates. Kane was busy chatting up a flight attendant, Breadman was holding his head to steady himself against the turbulence, and Hossa was still reading. The others were curled up and snoozing with their heads resting against the plane’s walls.

A second shimmy went through the cabin and shifted the luggage in the overhead bins. A couple Hawks murmured in surprise. Marian marked his page in his book, set it down on the seat next to him, and tightened his lap belt. Corey nervously followed the veteran. He got the sinking feeling in his stomach that he did when watching a perfect power play lay itself out in front of him and being powerless to stop it.

 

The speakers dinged optimistically. “Hello again, Hawks. We’ve got some turbulence here: bit of a rough patch. So please fasten your seat belts, I'm gonna go ahead and turn on the sign. But good news, we are fairly close to Buffalo. The wind blew us a little off course, and it'll take about another half an hour to correct. You’ll be on the ground within the hour, with plenty of time to catch up on your Zzz’s.”

The plane hitched as though it had run over a pack of geese, and the pilot yelped. “Sorry,” he sang, trying to correct his wayward course. “Bit of an air pocket.”

Corey slid open his little window. With each flash of the wing lights, he saw silver strings of sleet slashing through the air. Small crystals had formed on the outside of the window. The thin synthetic material that separated him from relatively instant death was cold and clammy to the touch and vibrated from the strained whir of the engines.

Shaw got up from his seat and stumbled towards Corey’s seat, flopping down. The goaltender nodded and the forward punched him goodnaturedly on the thick shoulder. Their bromance had been growing slowly yet steadily over the season: since Sharp had been traded. Shawzy and Sharpie were partners in crime and hung out all the time off the ice, having sleepovers and CoD tourneys just like the high school boys they practically were.

Corey was like that, I guess. Every once and awhile he’d have a couple of the guys over to drink beer and eat chips and shoot the breeze. But the old adage always seemed to keep them apart. “Goalies are a different breed.” Corey couldn't tell if he had screws loose before he was signed to the Hawks or if he had gotten that way from taking so many slapshots. Either way, he was a bit of a weirdo.

The fuselage gave one final lurch and the rapidly deteriorating air sick Panarin clapped his hands to his mouth. Hossa sensed the situation a few moments before everyone else.

“HOLD ON!” He bellowed when the plane began to shake violently and pitched forward at a sickening angle. Corey lurched forward and slammed his nose against the television screen in front of him, and blood dribbled across his lap.  
By now, all the Hawks were screeching and keeled forward in their seats, buckling in half where their safety belts latched them in. Over the loudspeaker, the pilot screamed instructions wildly at his crew and passengers. “PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY WATER LANDING, ASSUME CRASH POSITIONS!” Flight attendants swerved drunkenly through the aisles in attempt to save the hockey stars.

One was making her way to Shaw and Crow at the very back of the cabin. They couldn't hear her over the screams, both mechanical and human. But she appeared to be gesturing under her seat, where the life vests were stowed. The two Hawks tore them out of their packages and donned them.

Alarms were now blaring through the cabin, mixing cacophonously with the roar of the dying engines. Several sobs could also be heard, cries of fear and repentance.

Crow turned to Shawzy with a tear streaked face pink with horror. “ANDREW, MAN,” he bawled. “I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU WERE ALWAYS ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS!” He choked back a pitiful sob.

“THANKS, COREY,” Shaw screamed back. “YOU WERE UP THERE ON MY LIST, TOO.” Shaw turned his head forward and closed his eyes. A peaceful caul washed over him.

“BUT NOT LIKE, NUMBER ONE OR TWO?” Corey frowned slightly, and was a little peeved despite the circumstances.

“GODDAMMIT, LET ME DIE IN PEACE!”

“OKAY, BUT IF I DIE AND YOU LIVE, I’M GONNA HAUNT YOU, YOU JACKASS!” Corey yelled back. He slammed his hands onto the armrests and held on for dear life.

Drifting from the front of the cabin was a faint but unmistakable beat. “DUNDUNDUN, DUNDUNDUN, DUNDADUNNADUNNADUN.” It was Kaner, screaming the Hawks’ goal song, Chelsea Dagger. One by one, the players joined in: Shaw, Crawford, Rozsival, Hossa, Seabrook, Panarin, and Hjalmarsson. The sounds of sloshing water grew louder, but did not drown out the team’s chant. The actual water, which had burst through several windows and sprayed into the cabin, did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonny and Q receive word that the plane has crashed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angsty and poetic! It's been a weird day…
> 
> Written and posted in the span of two hours, so un-beta'd. Sorry for any errors. Inbox me and I will correct them.
> 
> For the rest of the work, chapters will probably alternate between the plane team and the bus team. I might even go all ASOIAF and have multiple narrators!
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Jonny woke with a start; the coach bus had hit a bump, jostling the captain and pulling him kicking and screaming from his nap. Not that it was a deep slumber. It was superficial and thready with filaments of nightmare. Jonny had been dreaming that his team was in the Stanley Cup final. But every time he passed to a teammate, they were gone. Kaner, Hjammer, Shawzy, all the guys had just disappeared. And Tazer was left to fend for himself out on the ice. 

Shouldering the remainder of sleepiness off with a gaping yawn, Jonny rubbed his eyes and sat up in his seat. He stretched and groaned at the stiff kink in his neck. Since half the team had opted for taking the plane, the bus was much less crowded than usual. In accordance with Hund’s rule, everybody sat single with their bags on the seat next to them. Towards the front were Q and the coaching staff. In the middle, Teravainen lay planking across the aisle, occupying 4 seats and still fast asleep. And Jonny brought up the rear so he could keep a watchful eye over his Hawk fledglings.

Outside, inky scenery whizzed by. Despite rocketing down the freeway at 70 miles per hour, the monotonous landscape gave the strange appearance of inching slowly through concentrated blue raspberry jello. Trees were little black fireworks in the distance and rosy clouds were scars in the night sky. The whole image was so serene that Jonny forgot if he had indeed woken up from his sleep.

But then his phone vibrated, tearing his eyes from the window and to the luminous screen in his pocket. The bright light made his face pucker in the bus’s dark interior, and it took a while before he could discern the message’s sender. It was from Coach Q. Without reading the message, Jonny looked up to the back of Q’s head. It was pointed downwards as the man was hunched over his phone as well. 

The message was simultaneously succinct and unsettling. “comw up here now,” it read. Q was not one for sloppiness, so the presence of typos and the absence of capitalization bore a pit in Jonny’s stomach. As quietly and discreetly as possible, the captain stood up from his seat and shimmied up to the front of the bus. Getting past Teuvo was difficult, and he tripped, waking Dunks. 

Suspence ounting on his shoulders, Toews came to his knees next to his coach’s seat. Q’s face, which was seldom hard to read, had become an Agatha Christie novel. Was it fear, anger, shock, depression? Maybe a mixture of all of those?

Toews waited patiently for Q to speak first. He did not want to be the one to break the tense silence. Q waffled back and forth, opening and closing his mouth, eyes darting all around. Finally, sensing Jonny’s anxiety, he came right out and said it. 

“The plane crashed.”

The bus slammed on its brakes and the impact drove all of the sound from Jonny’s ears. Well, not really, but that’s how it felt. All he could hear was the steady, fierce pounding of his athletic heart in his ears. An icy sweat squeezed out of his pores and his bowels turned to paste. Q had now adopted a milky white pallor.

Jonny’s first thought was not of his team, of Kaner, of Crow nor Shawzy, of the possibility of survivors. He really didn’t have a first thought, because his brain seemed to stall. (Staal, lol.) Nothing passed through his brain but blood, which felt like it was congealing and killing him slowly. 

Finally, words crept out of the captain’s mouth. “What? No… How… Are-” He wanted to say, “Are they alive?” but he did not expect, nor want, an answer. 

Q could only twitch his head side to side, eyes wide with terror and disbelief. Toews turned his head to wipe away a tear that was beginning to form. He swept a quick glance over the team; nobody seemed to suspect anything. Most were asleep. Under no circumstances could they find out right now. Jonny could barely take the news himself. The Hockey Gods themselves only knew what the team would do if they received the news en masse. 

Adopting a harsh and raspy whisper, Q leaned in to speak with Jonny. “They-” his breath hitched over a stifled sob. “They went down over the Atlantic. The pilot radioed that he lost control, and the plane vanished. Gone.” The man, who appeared a fraction of his normal and intimidating self, lurched forward and sobbed into his hands. Jonny, hoping to keep this all under wraps for the sake of the team, tried to act natural as he laid a hand on his coach’s back. He shook furiously as he tried to suppress his tears. 

No words came to Jonny’s mouth this time. For there was nothing to say. You’d have to be damn lucky, Edmonton Oilers draft pick lucky, to survive a plane crash. To hope for even a single survivor is to foolishly put your hopes above the balance of statistics. Level-headed and reasonable, Toews did not dare do that. The reality of the situation was, that with only the skinniest shade of doubt, half of his team had died in that crash. 

“What do we do?” was the only knowledgeable reply that Jonny’s grief-and-shock-stricken brain could formulate. Q sniffed and dabbed at his eyes with his cuffs, and turned, red-faced, to the captain. 

“I don’t know, Jonny.” The man before Toews was defeated, crushed, a shell of what he usually was on game days. This made Jonny’s heart sink even further in his chest, tearing straight through his heartstrings. “I just don’t know.” And the two men embraced again, sharing their grief with the hopes of halving it. But nothing could reduce their pain. Pulling away from the hug, Jonny looked into Q’s eyes. “Don’t tell the others,” they begged silently. And how could he? The news was just a big a shock to him as it would be to everyone else. They had to find out sooner or later. Their game was in less than 24 hours; something would seem off when half of the offensive and defensive lines were missing. 

Nevertheless, Jonny nodded gravely and stood. He padded quietly and inconspicuously to his seat, taking great care not to let his teammates see his tear-blotched face. He succeeded.

When Jonny finally reached his seat, after a walk that seemed neverending under the weight of eight caskets, he collapsed and wept silently into his hands.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A head-count of the survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little more gory and involves major character death. Consider yourselves warned. 
> 
> Not gonna lie: didn't proofread carefully. Sory four spelin mistaeks!1!
> 
> Thanks for reading! An update will follow probably within a week (busy schedule).

Shawzy opened his eyes slowly, readying himself to lay eyes on heaven. Turns out, heaven sucks. It looked a lot like a beaten up airplane fuselage that was split shaggedly down the middle. There was, however, what appeared to be a sexy flight attendant sitting up in the front of the plane. Shaw could see her messy blond hair tumbling around her pixie face. 

In a desperate attempt to go and greet her, Shaw vaulted himself out of his seat. He immediately regretted this decision as every muscle screamed in achy protest. But he had made it into heaven, by the grace of the Hockey Gods, and he was ready to live it up. 

He tore at his safety buckle and found that the belt was shredded, almost torn, and a dull line of pain stretched across his lap. Regardless, he lurched forward into the aisle. Grains of sand were strewn around the carpeted floor, but Andrew found them of little to no importance. He continued to stumble towards the flight attendant until he halted in the galley. And gagged. 

The flight attendant ended at the bottom of her torso. Her upper body was slumped in its seat, leaking blood into the saturated cushion. Her skin was pearly and transparent and her eyes had glazed over. Lipstick, or blood, Shawzy couldn't tell, drew a ragged line around her mouth puckered in fear. A black phone sat limply in her stiff hand. 

“HOLY SHIT!” Shaw shrieked. 

It began to hit Shawzy. The ache in his body, the severed flight attendant, the sandy fuselage… It all added up to one horrifying conclusion. Desperately, Shaw ran through his last memories before he had woken up in this hellish heaven. There was a terrible roar, a veritable wave of water, and everything had gone black. Looking around, Shaw arrived at his answer of the question he had so often tried (and failed) to answer: what happened last night?

The plane crashed. The plane had fucking crashed. 

Andrew reeled back from the flight attendant’s body and whipped around to examine the hell that had unfurled around him. There were patches of scarlet sand everywhere, hunks of ragged metal, and sunlight streaming in from the severed end of the plane. His first instinct (second, I guess, since his first was to pursue the bombshell) urged him to look around. In his field of vision was the entire cabin of the plane. It was wedged awkwardly into a sandy beach and sloped gently awkward. Feeling every single of his muscles scream in protest as if he had just been hit by Zdeno Chara, he loped up the incline to inspect the remaining seats. Most were empty, except for one shaggy head of dark brown hair sticking up from the very rear of the plane.

“COREY!” Shaw exclaimed, overjoyed that at least one other Hawk had survived. Guaranteed food supply. “MY MAIN MAN!” Corey didn’t respond because he was unconscious. There was a deep gash across his nose that eked fresh blood over the dried rivulets. Oh, and protruding from his gut was a 8-inch metal shard, piercing through all his coat and shirt, all the way down to his bowels. Shawzy retched, bile stinging his raw throat. When he turned back, however, Crow had opened his eyes into confused slits. 

“…whaaa?” He mumbled. The goalie swiveled his neck around, grimacing, and looked deeply into his forward’s eyes. “Shawzer? Where are we?”

“Dude,” was all Andrew could think to say. “We’re in some pretty deep shit. You especially.” Corey rumpled his face in confusion, causing flakes of dried blood to tumble onto his already soaked lap. Shaw frowned with sympathy and nodded down at Corey’s stomach. The goaltender leaned forward to examine his lower half and howled with pain and fear as his eyes landed on the chip sticking out of his gut. 

“WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!” Corey thrashed around in fear, which sent paroxysms of pain through his abdomen, only causing him to writhe around more violently. Shaw put his hands on Crow’s shoulders. The goalie’s breath came in shallow and rapid spurts that drained all color from his already-pale face. 

“Dude,” he started, trying to maintain his own composure. “Our plane crashed. I don’t know what happened to the others, you’re the only one I’ve seen. But I have to go find them, stay here!” Corey wailed in protest as Shaw inched away, stumbling down the sloping fuselage. 

He looked in each block of seats for a Blackhawk, but didn’t find any. Oh God, was he stuck on a desert island with Crow? Of all those hypothetical situations he’d come up with while out drinking with his teammates, he didn’t expect them to actually come true. But his prayers were answered when he saw a pair of sneakers sticking out from the side of the fuselage. 

His heart leapt up into his throat, then plummeted down into the very pit of his stomach as he saw the blood pooled around the legs. The upper body was nowhere to be found; it was smooshed underneath the plane. This poor son-of-a-bitch had gone full Wizard of Oz. Tears pooled in Shaw’s eyes, because he recognized those shoes. This pancake was Brent Seabrook. 

Feeling disgustedly sick and overwhelmed with confused fear, Shaw stumbled away from the legs and collapsed into the sand. It was pleasantly warm, and drank the tears that now flowed readily from the hockeyer’s eyes. He sobbed, and the sand drank that too. He almost sobbed too loud to hear the groans coming from the other side of the plane. Almost. Shaw’s breath hitched and he leapt to his feet. He loitered for just a moment, confirmed the presence of the sound, and dashed off to find its source. 

While the scene was utterly depressing, it opened a dam in Shawzer’s heart and flooded him with relieved joy. In front of him were Kane and Panarin tangled in a pathetic and sobbing lump next to the crumpled bodies of Hossa and Hjalmarsson. The two kids were too busy keening to notice Andrew, who stood triumphantly in front of them with arms outstretched. 

“Hey, guys!” He yelled. The crying quieted, and Bread Man and Kaner looked up. It took the two a moment to process what had happened, staring at Shaw with confusion in their tear-stained eyes. 

“Shawzy?” Kaner sniffed. He struggled to stand, avoiding putting weight on his left foot, and hobbled over to the forward. “You’re alive?” 

“Sure am, buddy!” Shaw gave Kaner a hearty clap on the shoulder, to which he cried out in pain. Artemi was still seated with his knees hugged up against his chest and wailing in muddied Russian. Shaw left Kaner standing awkwardly like a stork and flopped down to the rookie’s level. He gave him a manly embrace. 

“Shaw, you survive?” Artemi asked feebly. Shawzy nodded with genuine satisfaction. Panarin only whimpered and looked back at Hjammer and Hossa, who were sprawled out in the sand, faces covered in cuts and bruises. Shaw crawled over to examine them. He checked out Marian first, leaning close to the veteran’s chest to look for the up-and-down motion of his steady breath. Which he found. He exclaimed, then called to the two juniors behind him.

“Hossa’s alive!” Then he army-crawled over to Niklas, hoping that his good luck streak would continue. It did, because as he approached the defenseman Shaw heard weak moans coming from deep in his throat. He whooped again with excitement and leapt up. He immediately regretted that decision as his bruised and torn muscles screamed in protest, but didn’t let pain dim his relief. They had survived!

“And Hjalmarsson, too!” Shawzy pumped his fists in the air like he had just scored the winning OT goal.

Kaner didn’t look as thrilled as his teammate. “That’s great, but everyone else is dead. We’re the only ones who survived.” His was utterly crestfallen.

Shaw shook his head furiously. “That’s not true,” he sang. “Corey’s in the plane. He’s a little banged up, and to be honest I probably shouldn’t have left him alone all this time, but he survived too!” Nothing seemed to cheer the two kids up.

“But Seabs is dead and Rozsival is gone, probably dead as well,” Panarin lamented, wringing his hands. Now Shaw was beginning to grow annoyed. They had survived a goddamn plane crash, wasn’t that enough for these guys? Yeah, they were stranded on a desert island without food or water or communication with the outside world, but they were together, right?

Suddenly, a guttural bellow lumbered through the air and turned the three Blackhawks’ blood to slush. All three jumped immediately to their feet and raced back (hobbled back, in Kane’s case) to the destroyed plane. They scrambled upward, following Shaw. Artemi shrieked when he saw Corey.

The goalie was doubled over in his seat, wailing as he held the oversized metal shrapnel with both hands. His hands were slick with the blood that pulsated from the wound in his stomach. Crow must’ve tried to pull it out on his own. Shaw gritted his teeth, feeling nauseous just imagining the pain he must’ve been in. 

Crawford looked up to his teammates with wet, afraid, puppy-dog eyes. Panarin leapt to the man’s side and put one hand on his shoulder, brushing away sweat-matted hair with the other. Corey was friggin’ messed up. 

“Did you try to pull it out?” Shaw cooed, keeping his voice low and soft to calm the hulking goaltender. Corey could only nod and frown with tears staining his face, like a kid that had fallen off his bike. And landed on a piece of industrial steel.

Pat hissed in sympathetic pain. “Tough break, dude.” Shaw was confused as to what the kid was trying to accomplish: downplay the fact that his teammate had rebar jammed into his small intestine? But it did seem to be working, as Corey stopped blubbering. Or maybe that was the blood loss taking its toll.

“We should move him,” Shaw resolved. Crow whined, but Artemi continued stroking his hair for comfort. “Get him out of the seat and down by Hossa and Hjalmarsson. When they wake up, we can figure out what the absolute hell we’re going to do. Got it?” Kaner and Bread Man nodded solemnly and offered their arms to Corey, who was breathing sharply while trying to unbuckle his seatbelt. 

As soon as he did, he tumbled forward. Panarin was barely able to catch Crow before he could fall into the seat in front of him and further lodge the shard in his lower GI tract. As soon as the two had shuffled out into the aisle, Shaw took Corey’s other shoulder and supported him all the way down to the beach. Kane hopped behind them.

The beach itself was fairly picturesque, despite being the site of a fatal tragedy. The water was a deep azure, the sand like raw sugar to the eyes and velvet to the toes. In the distance was a rolling emerald slope that stretched lazily into a bright sky streaked with feathery clouds. A few hundred feet away the sand melted into rich, springy grass and then into massive and thick palm trees that waved in the salty breeze. Caws of seafowl could be heard over the hiss of the ocean’s waves, but there were no birds in the sky. The occasional creak from the airplane’s steaming fuselage was the only mar in this perfect scene.

Eventually, the haphazard group made it back to the veteran players on the beach. Hjalmarsson had woken up and was sitting rubbing at his forehead. Seeing his four teammates limping over to him prompted a toothy smile. Hossa was still unconscious and facedown in the sand, but the soft rise and fall of his back betrayed his longevity. Kaner hobbled over to the defenseman, leaving Panarin and Shawzy to care for the fast-fading Corey.

“We did it, baby!” Hjammer screamed. Kaner wrinkled his face in confusion. “ ‘It’ meaning ‘survived the plane crash.’ ” Then he nodded. Pat sat down and winced as pain radiated from his ankle, which he stretched out in front of him. 

“I don’t know about you, but this wasn’t on my fucking bucket list,” Patrick snorted bitterly. Hjammer gave a wry smile.

“Me neither, Kaner,” he agreed with a chuckle. Pat could definitely get fired up, but Niklas always seemed to stay positive, and he really admired the defenseman for that. That guy never left the penalty box with a grudge or a bad attitude. Now here he was, stranded in God-knows-where with little to no hope of survival, with his head held high. That takes guts, like standing-in-front-of-a-Crosby-slapshot guts. 

They sat in silence for a while. Silence, with a background of Corey’s pitiful moans. Finally, Hjalmarsson pounded his fists into the sand, sending up a spray of grains. All the surviving conscious teammates looked at him in shocked expectancy.

“Come on, guys,” he barked. “We gotta do something!”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys get hit with some good news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My knowledge of aviation is as limited as my knowledge of geography. So take the use of the word "tropical" with a grain of sand. Get the pun? ;) 
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long to post. I had graduation, and I started a new job. Which inspired a new Penguins fic, which I am going to shamelessly plug here (http://archiveofourown.org/works/6995941/chapters/15937381). 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Drop me a comment if you feel so inclined- I love reading what you guys have to say!

“Yeah, Hjammer?!” Kaner snapped in reply. “Just what do you propose we do?! If you can’t tell, we are pretty much fucked!” 

“But not too fucked, Kaner!” Hjalmarsson sprang to his feet, wincing from the pain that radiated through his banged-up body. “We survived, didn’t we? Shouldn’t we all be thankful for that?”

“I’m thankful,” Corey whined. He was too weak to even sound sarcastic. Hjalmarsson applauded his netminder’s perseverance. 

“Thankful,” Shaw snorted. “ ‘Thankful,’ says the guy with a giant damn metal spike sticking out of his gut! I mean, he’s probably gonna get tetanus or some shit!”

Artemi curled his knees up to his chest and began to rock back and forth on the beach. Two dead teammates, three more fighting, not to mention the destroyed plane fuselage still smoking behind him. For crying out loud, this was his first year in the NHL!

“The hell are we going to do?” Kaner screamed. “Look around, dumbasses!” He gestured grandly with outstretched arms and spun around. “There’s nothing here! We’re doomed!” Hjammer merely clapped his hands over his ears and turned back to look at the forest landscape. Shaw, on the other hand, let his grated nerves get the better of him and surged to his feet. 

“Calm down, Patrick,” Shaw growled, stepping forward. The Mutt was coming out. Kaner rose to the challenge. 

“Don’t call me ‘Patrick,’ ” the winger hissed back. “Or I’ma start calling you ‘Andrew.’ ”

“Yeah, that’d be stupid,” Corey piped up from down on the ground. “No offense, Shawzy.”

Both forwards ignored their goalie. With fire in their eyes, they stared daggers at each other. The waves on the beach seemed to egg them on with their incessant rhythm: hissss, hissss, hissss. 

The rookie started whimpering, and the waterworks began. Giant tears left moist streaks down his mud and sweat-caked face. Hjalmarsson sat slowly down next to the lad and wrapped him in his arms and patting his fluffy hair. They curled up into a loose ball of empathy. 

Everybody took this opportunity to calm down. Tensions were running understandably high. Except for Corey, although his calm demeanor was mostly due to blood loss. 

“We have no idea how to survive on a desert island,” Kaner said with more fear than anger. The initial adrenaline of waking up in a strange place, even though Pat was fairly used to that by now, was ebbing and leaving behind the kid underneath. He truly is just a kid, after all. 

“He’s right, you know,” Hjammer shrugged. “We’re pro hockey players, not pilots-”  
All five conscious hockeyers tensed from the sudden realization. 

“Oh shit, the pilot!” Shaw yelped and dashed back to the wreckage. The plane crash had claimed his shoes, and his feet sunk into the coarse, warm sand with each stride. In the distance, the crash site bobbed up and down 65 sprinted towards the cockpit, growing larger with each footstep. 

The entire front of the plane had been wrenched away from the cabin, with pieces of wire and metal sticking out haphazardly. Our hero had to tread very carefully so as not to step on a shard and end up like Crow. Luckily unscathed, Andrew found the door to the cockpit ajar by just and inch. Without thinking, he slammed the door open. 

The pilot was in there, all right. Not in his seat, though. The force of the crash landing had torn right through his safety harness. Right now, the poor man was plastered against the plane’s windows. The tropical sunlight that streamed through the window mixed sickeningly with his caked innards, casting a strawberry colored light around the cockpit and making the entire room stuffy with the reek of iron. 

Shawzy’s heart plummeted so far and fast that it bore a deep hole in the bottom of his stomach: not just for the death of the pilot, but for all of its repercussions. This spellef almost certain doom for the stranded Blackhawks. 

Shaw’s mind raced. Everybody knew about that weird “black box” thing that planes have, but did it need to be activated manually? If so, had this guy died before sending out a distress signal? And this was a miniscule charter plane; did it even have a distress signal?

Utterly crestfallen, Andrew turned to exit the ruined cockpit. Out of frustration, he gave a hearty kick to a piece of debris that skittered into the corner of the room. When it banged into the thin fiberglass wall, something dislodged. A little door had popped open. Curiosity drove the young hockeyer over to it. 

When Shaw opened it, he whooped with delight, rapture, whatever you want to call it. 

Inside the hidden compartment, illuminated by a single white LED light, was a first aid kit.

He didn’t even stop to open and inspect it; Shawzer just grabbed the bulging leather bag and leapt out of the cockpit. 

“GUYS!” He bellowed as he streaked back down the beach. His teammates’ heads perked up, save for Hossa, who was still face-down and knocked out in the sand. 

Artemi wiped at a tear and shook his head in an attempt to clear away the embarrassing evidence of his terror. “What is it?”

Panting, Shaw ground to a halt and collapsed to his knees in the sand beside Crawford. “First aid kit!”

Kaner pumped his fists in the air and Artemi gave a wavering yet strong smile. Hjalmarsson gave his teammates a vice-like hug. Finally, some good news. 

“Well, open it!” The defenceman salivated with anticipation. This was literally a reveal of life and death. 

Life it was. The pack was stuffed silly with all kinds of materials, medical and otherwise. Bandages and splints, sutures and needles, various medicines, scissors and tweezers, a thermometer, a stethoscope, latex gloves, and even handy field guide/emergency booklet. In addition, the kit contained diverse survival items, like a fire-starter, cantines and pots, flares, canvas, carabiners and pins, a flashlight with several sets of batteries, a compass, a whistle, thick rope, water purification tablets, and the Crown Jewel of survival paraphernalia: a massive Swiss Army knife loaded with every possible feature. Yup, even a corkscrew. 

Now Panarin wasn’t the only one crying. All of them were. This kit meant that they had a fighting chance at survival. No: more than a fighting chance. This was as close to a guarantee as they were gonna get. Hell, they’d take that.

Still laying facedown on the beach, Marian Hossa began to regain consciousness. He coughed, sending a small spray of sand into the air. Without even taking in his surroundings, he pushed himself up to his knees. His face was covered in thousands of grains of sand that had stuck to the sweat. Eyes narrowed into slits from the bright sun, the veteran forward looked around in confusion. From what he could tell, a couple of his teammates were jumping up and down on a beach, and Crow was sunbathing. 

“What’s going on?” He murmured with justified confusion, lacking the clarity to fully comprehend the scene for himself. 

“We’re gonna be just fine,” Shaw smiled back.


	6. Chapter 6 (Gory Crawford)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys deal with the giant-hunk-of-metal-in-Corey's-gut scenario.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This chapter gets pretty gory. I've been watching waaaaay too much House. :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> ALSO, I now have a tumblr! I have no idea how to use it, but please send me prompts and requests! http://yeahscienceao3.tumblr.com

Marian Hossa panned his head around, taking in every singe detail of the scene around him. First, he saw his beat-up teammates huddled together on the beach. Many were bleeding from cuts and scrapes all over their faces. And even though his eyesight was blurred, Marian could make out a giant spear sticking out of his goaltender’s gut. Horrified and disgusted, he whipped his head around, sending a paroxysm down his spine. But his body went numb when he saw the plane.

Smoldering, the colossal carcass silhouetted itself against the sun in ragged black stripes. The crackles and creaks from the groaning infrastructure created a heart-wrenching funeral dirge. Around the fuselage, speckles of blood and metal shards poxed the sand.

He had figured it out a long time ago. As soon as he felt the first trembles of turbulence, he knew what was going to happen. Not in a clairvoyance kind of way; there was a stirring deep in his gut that wasn’t from the questionable airplane food.

Even when Hossa closed his eyes, flashes of color cut across his eyelids. Yellow: the emergency oxygen masks. Teal: the seawater that came streaming through the windows. White: the last color he had seen, when the plane threw him from his seat face-first onto the beach and knocking him out.

 _‘Don’t allow yourself to panic,’_ Hossa reassured himself. _‘You need to be calm for them.’_ His eyes darted to Breadman, whose teary eyes were fixated upon the veteran winger. _‘Extra calm.’_

“We crashed,” he croaked. Pursing his lips, Shaw nodded solemnly. 81 sighed and looked around at his haggard team. Including himself, there were six.

The words barely made their way around the solid lump in Marian’s throat. “Andrew,” it came out a whisper. “Where is the rest of the team?” When the kid began to draw lines in the sand, he knew.

“Who?”

Andrew gestured to a crumpled ball half wedged underneath the side of the plane. “Seabs,” he muttered. “And Rozsival is missing.”

Distressed and wanting nothing more than the salty comfort of a good, long cry, Hossa ran his fingers through his hair. There were flakes of dried blood on his hand when he pulled them back. Sighing again, he shuffled over to the rest of the team. They had all turned their attention to Corey, whose moans had been ebbing steadily. Good news for the teams’ ears, bad news for everything else.

“Crow?” Artemi jostled the goaltender’s shoulder. His shaggy head rocked back and forth, but his eyelids only fluttered. “Guys, we have to do something!”

Kane dragged himself to Corey’s side and poked him a few times. “He’s lost too much blood,” he determined. “And if we don’t get this metal stake outta him, it’s gonna get infected. That’ll kill him long before anything else.”

Everybody nodded. Crawford mumbled, but nobody knew if it was assent or dissent. That really didn’t matter though, because Shaw reached for the first aid kit and pulled it over. As a professional athlete, hockey nonetheless, he’d seen (and had) his fair share of stitches and first aid. Granted, removing metal shrapnel is highly unlikely (not entirely out of question) during a game. A syringe of anaesthesia, a hearty tug, some sutures, and a dose of antibiotics would take care of that.

But Blackhawks be damned if Andrew Shaw was gonna be yankin’ that shard. Instead, he gently pushed the first aid kit over to his teammate, Marian, who looked back with raised eyebrows.

“Wait,” he held up his hands. “I’m doing it?” Hjammer nodded with gusto. “Nonono, I am not doing this! It’ll kill him!”

“He’ll be fine!” Kaner jumped in, sounding as though that was the ultimate reassurance. “If that guy can sleep through his ridiculous snores, I’m sure he can sleep through this!”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” Hossa screamed. Panarin continued to shake the goalie until he regained thread consciousness. All the blood was gone from his face, leaving nothing but pasty white skin. Even his lips were five shades lighter, giving him the undead and eerie look of a corpse. _‘Apropos,’_ Hossa thought darkly.

Shaw was busy rooting around the first aid bag. Bottles of medicine clinked against each other. When he resurfaced, he was holding a bottle labeled ‘Morphine.’ After skimming the label, he inverted the bottle, jammed in a syringe, and drew the appropriate volume. Then, as though handling an explosive, he gave it to Hossa.

“Crow, buddy,” he cooed, leaning across his teammate’s body and whispering right in his face. “How are you feeling?” As the man formulated an incoherent response, Hossa slowly moved the tip of the needle closer and closer to the giant gash. Just like a dentist, Marian pretended to understand, then came out of nowhere and shoved the needle directly into Crawford’s wound.

“PEKKA RINNE!” The goalie swore, convulsing and pawing at his stomach. He found himself in a terrible conundrum, as writhing in pain only made him hurt more. Tears streamed from his eyes, and they were like acid to Marian. Hossa cupped his hands around Corey’s head and brushed his sweaty hair out of his face, shushing him.

A few minutes later, the sobbing began to calm. Corey became tranquil and it sounded like he was even humming. The medicine must’ve been kicking in, which is just what everyone wanted.

“Can you feel anything, Crow?” Hjalmarsson asked, worried. He smiled when Crawford shook his head.

Marian turned to the defenceman. “Can you distract him for a few seconds?” He whispered so that Corey wouldn’t hear. “I- I’m gonna pull the thing out.” Niklas nodded and scooched over to the impaled player.

“How ya feelin’, bud?” Crawford gave him a thumbs up. Niklas turned back to Marian and shrugged. That was as close to a green light as they were gonna get. So might as well take it.

Marian, on the other hand, was getting himself into position. He pressed his shoulder up against the shard and found a solid grip for his hands at the bottom. Whenever he adjusted his hold, Corey grimaced.

“I’m feeling okay,” Corey croaked. “My tummy feels **ffffFFFFLEEURYYYY**!!!!!” He shrieked when Marian wrenched the piece out of his teammate’s stomach, sending a shower of blood that sprayed all the way to poor Artemi. Crawford howled, face red from tears, blood, and pain. Kane clasped his hands over his ears to block out the feral bawling. Hjalmarsson clasped his hands over his eyes to block out the pool of blood that bubbled out of the open wound.

Crawford quickly lost consciousness. Marian got to work, sopping up blood with gauze that saturated disturbingly quickly. Andrew Shaw played the role of nurse and busied himself by preparing the suture. The gash was a mangled mess, and sewing it all up proved to be a veritable task. The result was a hodgepodge of purple stitches that crisscrossed all over the place. It looked like the spokes of a tire or a crackhead spider’s web, covered with flaps of skin and chunks of agglutinated blood. But at least the bleeding had stopped and the goalie was still breathing. Unconscious, but alive. Marian packed the gaping hole with gauze and taped it shut.

They all sat in shock for several minutes, panting and keeping hawks’ eyes (pun intended) on Corey. When everyone was satisfied that he was going to pull through, Hjalmarsson piped up.

“Kaner has a messed up ankle,” he added. Kane shot him a furious glance, then looked in horror at his bloody teammates bent over the first aid kit.

“No thanks, Nurse Ratched,” he chortled. And they all began to laugh, for the first time since they awoke, stranded on a desert island.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Updates coming soon.


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